sommes
menaces."

Under these critical circumstances how did it behove Madame de Chevreuse
to act? She was compelled to restrain Madame de Montbazon, but she could
neither abandon her nor be false to herself. She resolved therefore to
follow up energetically the formidable project which had become the last
hope and supreme resource of her party. Through Madame de Montbazon,
Beaufort had been dragged into it. The latter had mustered the men of
action already mentioned, and who were wholly devoted to him. A plot had
been devised and every measure concerted for surprising and perhaps
killing the Cardinal.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONSPIRACY OF THE DUCHESS DE CHEVREUSE AND THE DUKE DE BEAUFORT TO
GET RID OF MAZARIN.

ONE need not be greatly astonished at such an enterprise on the part of
two women of high rank and a grandson of Henry the Great. At that
stirring epoch of French history--the interval between the League and
the Fronde--energy and strength were the distinctive traits of the
French aristocracy. Neither court life nor a corrupting opulence had yet
enervated it. Everything was then in extremes, in vice as in virtue. Men
attacked and defended one another with the same weapons. The Marshal
d'Ancre had been massacred; more than one attempt had been made to
assassinate Richelieu; whilst he, on his side, had not been backward in
having recourse to the sword and block. Corneille paints faithfully the
spirit of the epoch. His Emilie is also involved in an assassination,
and she is not the less represented as a perfect heroine. Madame de
Chevreuse had long been accustomed to conspiracies; she was bold and
unscrupulous. She did not gather round her such men as Beaupuis,
Saint-Ybar, De Varicarville, and de Campion merely to pass the time in
idle conversation. She had not remained a stranger to the designs they
had formerly concocted against Richelieu, for in 1643 she fomented, as
we have seen, their exaltation and their devotedness; and it was not
unreasonable, certainly, that Mazarin should attribute to her the first
idea of the project which Beaufort was to accomplish.

At the same time it must be remembered that the _Importants_ and their
successors the _Frondeurs_ denied this project and declared it the
invention of the Cardinal. It is a point of the highest historical
importance and deserves serious examination, as upon this conspiracy,
real or imaginary, as may be determined after careful investigation,